2

There’s a dead woman in my basement. I can hear her down there when I stop working, scratching with her arm or her leg in the dirt of the dirt floor. Sometimes I have to stop working and walk over to the nailed shut door and press my ear against it and listen, and listen, until the soft sound gets louder. I press my ear harder against the door, or switch ears, or sometimes I get down on my hands and knees and listen at the crack at the bottom.

Listening makes my hands shake and my eyes tear, but I have to listen because I think the sound is getting closer. I hear it now in the dining room, where I never heard it before.

When the sun comes up in the morning I rip the board I nail across my door every night off with my hammer, then I go downstairs and listen and count the scratches, or try to hum at the same pitch as yesterday to see if I can hear them when yesterday I couldn’t. I think about ripping the board off the basement door too, and I scheme ways to get it bright down there so I can see her. But then I picture her gaunt face, lipless, grinning up and still moving and scraping, as I know she is down there. I never rip the board off, in fact I’ve nailed up three more.

Sometimes I think about packing my things and setting the place on fire, and walking out the front door onto the porch and never hearing the sound again. I’d be dead in days if I did that, I think, so I’m staying here and dealing.